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Boys do a great deal of writing at a Chinese school: when they are able to read and to repeat quotations from their famous books, they must go on to the higher art. First they are taught how to hold the brush pen. Each boy is given a small book of red characters. He dips his sharp-pointed brush in ink and holding it straight up and down begins painting the red letters over. After a time he goes on to tracing letters on thin paper over a copy. A square of wood, painted white, serves him as a slate. On this he writes characters, which balance one another, as heaven and earth, fire and water, light and darkness. By and by he begins essay and letter-writing, which is very difficult in Chinese. Pupils used to spend many years on this, but nowadays schoolboys in China have to do more sums and less writing than their fathers did.

Writing essays and verses used to be the chief lessons at a Chinese school; for when scholars were fairly good at these, they entered for the examinations. It was a difficult thing for a boy to go into the great examination hall among two or three thousand men, and, after having been searched to make sure that he had no books or cribs up his sleeves, to go and sit at a bench and write his essay. Yet many gained degrees when very young.